Jesse

[I:O]  (2020)
by Omer Barash (b. 1995)

* World Premiere Recording *
| The Israeli Contemporary Music Project

Omer Barash: [I:O] | Hagai Yodan, piano

On Trial and Error 
the work of vivienne spiteri
in four parts
part 1

She has been called reclusive, enigmatic, irreverent, and even a destroyer of music, but also a true artist.  Dubbed an iconoclast, her approach to music has always been “sans a priori.”   She has also been described as enraged and contradictory.  

Her concerts have been reviewed as being “sans envergure,” but also as offering listeners a remarkable presence.  Concert spaces have gone from sold out to empty. Concert and record producers lose patience at her fastidiousness,  yet claim to respect her determination and clarity of vision;  her recordings have been described as an enrichment of humanity.  Some composers seek to work with her, while others avoid her like the plague.  Most musicians remain perplexed. 

Her own relationship to her instrument presents parallel binary tensions:  Love -  hate, respect – ridicule, creation – destruction.  vivienne spiteri’s sincere intention is to give expressive voice to music at any cost and by any means when played at the harpsichord,  an instrument whose very mechanism defies musical expression.

//

On dit qu’elle est solitaire, énigmatique, irrévérencieuse, et même, déstructrice de la musique, mais aussi, une vraie artiste.  Baptisée iconoclaste, son approche  à la musique a toujours été sans priori.  En outre, elle est décrite comme un être enragée et contradictoire.

Les critiques de ses concerts la décrivent comme “sans envergure” mais aussi comme une présence remarquable.  Les salles de concert sont à la fois vides et à guichets fermés.  Les productrices* qui s’impatientent devant son approche méticuleuse, se disent toutefois respecter sa ténacité et sa clairvoyance. Ses enregistrements sonores sont pour certaines*   “un enrichissement de l’humanité.”  Tandis que quelques compositrices*   cherchent à travailler avec elle, d’autres  l’évitent comme la peste.   La plupart des musiciennes* reste perplèxe.

Sa propre rélation avec son instrument comprend des parallèles tensions binaires : l’amour – la haine,  le respect – la dérision,  la création – la déstruction.  

Le vœu le plus sincère de vivienne spiteri est de redonner à la musique, à tout prix et par tous les moyens, sa voix voilée et expressive, quand elle est jouée à un instrument dont le mécanisme défie toute expression musicale:  le clavecin. 

*la forme féminine comprend le masculin

//

Artistes dans le balado:

Voix: 

narrateur: peter von tiesenhausen
rainre maria rilke : sonnets à orphée (sonnet 1), lu par fred weihs

Musiciennes*:

viole de gambe (dans les pleurs de M. de sainte-colombe) : margaret little et susie napper (les voix humaines)  
harpe celtique: sharlene wallace
accordéon: joseph macerollo
violon: lawrence beckwith
banjo: kirk eliot 
guitare électrique: tim brady 
clavecin: vivienne spiteri / vivie’ vinçent

Sonification de Comet 67P créée par Manuel Senfft 

//

Musique: 
1. 0:00 - 7:10 - musique d’ouverture:  'isadora sings' pour support sonore et clavecin - kent olofsson et vivienne spiteri / vivie’ vinçent 
2. 7:32 - 8:57 - 'sonification du comet 67P'
3. 9:02 - 12:54 - 'continuum fur cembalo' - gyorgi ligeti - vivienne spiteri
4. 17:27 -  18:34 - 'miroirs' (bande et clavecin)(extrait) - micheline coulombes saint-marcoux 
5. 19:17 - 24:07 - 'the desert speaks…praescio III'(clavecin MIDI) (extrait) - bruce pennycook 
6. 28:16 -  39:28 - turbo toccata (clavecin MIDI) -  david keane
7. 41:24 -  49:44 - 'two pieces for harpsichord' -  wendy prezament
8. 53:46 - 1:03:02 - 'eudoxia' - pierre desrochers 

//

Le Zine Innovations est rendue possible grâce au soutien généreux du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, du Conseil des arts du Canada, du Conseil des arts de Montréal et de la Fondation SOCAN.

On Trial and Error Part 1

On Trial and Error
the work of vivienne spiteri
in four parts
part 2

She has been called reclusive, enigmatic, irreverent, and even a destroyer of music, but also a true artist. Dubbed an iconoclast, her approach to music has always been “sans a priori.” She has also been described as enraged and contradictory.

Her concerts have been reviewed as being “sans envergure,” but also as offering listeners a remarkable presence. Concert spaces have gone from sold out to empty. Concert and record producers lose patience at her fastidiousness, yet claim to respect her determination and clarity of vision; her recordings have been described as an enrichment of humanity. Some composers seek to work with her, while others avoid her like the plague. Most musicians remain perplexed.

Her own relationship to her instrument presents parallel binary tensions: Love - hate, respect – ridicule, creation – destruction. vivienne spiteri’s sincere intention is to give expressive voice to music at any cost and by any means when played at the harpsichord, an instrument whose very mechanism defies musical expression.

//

On dit qu’elle est solitaire, énigmatique, irrévérencieuse, et même, déstructrice de la musique, mais aussi, une vraie artiste. Baptisée iconoclaste, son approche à la musique a toujours été sans priori. En outre, elle est décrite comme un être enragée et contradictoire.

Les critiques de ses concerts la décrivent comme “sans envergure” mais aussi comme une présence remarquable. Les salles de concert sont à la fois vides et à guichets fermés. Les productrices* qui s’impatientent devant son approche méticuleuse, se disent toutefois respecter sa ténacité et sa clairvoyance. Ses enregistrements sonores sont pour certaines* “un enrichissement de l’humanité.” Tandis que quelques compositrices* cherchent à travailler avec elle, d’autres l’évitent comme la peste. La plupart des musiciennes* reste perplèxe.

Sa propre rélation avec son instrument comprend des parallèles tensions binaires : l’amour – la haine, le respect – la dérision, la création – la déstruction.

Le vœu le plus sincère de vivienne spiteri est de redonner à la musique, à tout prix et par tous les moyens, sa voix voilée et expressive, quand elle est jouée à un instrument dont le mécanisme défie toute expression musicale: le clavecin.

*la forme féminine comprend le masculin

//

Artistes dans le balado:

Voix:

narrateur: peter von tiesenhausen
rainre maria rilke : sonnets à orphée (sonnet 1), lu par fred weihs

Musiciennes*:

viole de gambe (dans les pleurs de M. de sainte-colombe) : margaret little et susie napper (les voix humaines)  
harpe celtique: sharlene wallace
accordéon: joseph macerollo
violon: lawrence beckwith
banjo: kirk eliot 
guitare électrique: tim brady 
clavecin: vivienne spiteri / vivie’ vinçent

Sonification de Comet 67P créée par Manuel Senfft

//

Musique:
1. 3:05 - 14:45 - 'overture to orpheus'
2. 16:56 - 19:00 - 'les pleurs'
3. 25:39 - 34:54 - 'sancerre' - bruce mather
4. 35:46 - 48:35 - 'toccare' - david eagle
5. 1:01:56 - 1:08:50 - 'capriccio 1' - bengt hambraeus
6. 1:20:02 - 1:22:48 - 'on the other hand' - john beckwith

//

Le Zine Innovations est rendue possible grâce au soutien généreux du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, du Conseil des arts du Canada, du Conseil des arts de Montréal et de la Fondation SOCAN.

On Trial and Error Part 2

A little quartet I composed for the 2013 Augustfest in Brandon, Manitoba.

The players are Gillian Carrabre (violin), Christopher Byman (Clarinet), Ariel Carrabre (Cello), and Jesse Plessis (Piano).

Recorded by Scott Howarth.

Jesse Plessis - A Boy And His Universe

Edifice (1989) for Double Mixed Chorus, 15 Winds, and Soprano and Baritone Soloists. Montreal Symphony Orchestra Winds and Chorus, McGill University Concert Choir, Jennifer Rasor - Soprano, Stuart Graham - Baritone.

Edifice

Kontakion (2008) for Violin, Clarinet in Bb, Piano, and 5-channel computer processed audio with real-time audio spatialization. Performed by Deanna Oye - Piano, Margaret Mezei - Clarinet, and Peter Visentin - Violin.

KONTAKION

Pensées Interdites (2006) for Violin, Bass Clarinet , and Piano. Performed by Ensemble Resonance - Brinna Brinkerhoff - Violin, Stan Climie - Bass Clarinet, Colleen Athparia - Piano.

Pensées Interdites

Pli (1997) for Solo Piano. Shannon Wettstein - Piano.

Distrans I (1993) for wind quintet and piano. Performed by Sandra Brown – piano, John Fonville – flute, Susan Barrett – oboe, Robert Zelickman – clarinet, Warren Greff – horn, David Savage – Bassoon.


Distrans I

Trying to capture in music a little of the feeling of Saint-Exupery's "Le Petit Prince."

Jesse Plessis - Excerpt From Inventions, Book 1 - L'essentiel Est Invisible Pour Les Yeux

Étoiles Filantes

Live recording from the 2015 Centric Festival held at the CASA Arts Centre in Lethbridge, Alberta.

Franz Schubert - Der Erlkonig - Ian Fundytus and Jesse Plessis

Recorded in the University of Lethbridge Recital Hall, Nov. 6, 2016.

Samuel Barber - Sure On This Shining Night, Op. 13 No. 3 - Lisa Mulgrew & Jesse Plessis

Luminal: A Lullaby Requiem was commissioned by Julian Burnside in 2008 for Silo String Quartet, who for this Myles Mumford recording were Aaron Barnden (Violin), Andrea Keeble (Violin), Ceridwen Davies (Viola) and Caerwen Martin (Cello).Caerwen, Silo's founder, specifically wanted me to respond to Robert Jay Lifton’s study The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. In late 1930’s Germany, borne out of the concept of Lebensunwertes Leben (life unworthy of life), a form of institutional murder masqueraded behind a revisionist-Darwinian idea of racial purity. Luminal was a sedative repeatedly and secretively administered to children marked for the “Euthanasia” program in order to induce “continuous sleep”, coma and ultimately death, as was the practice.

I had for a long time been fascinated with the death of the Goebbels children, through sedative, then poison, at their mother’s hand. I remain intrigued by them as culturally ambivalent figures, unsure still how to read them. They cannot be fully claimed as victims of the Nazi regime since the suffering of so many others privileged their entire life, nor, as children, can one view them as culpable. They are stuck then, as tragic interstitial cultural icons, broadly perceived as beyond memorial. With so little known of them, save for their life given, and life taken, they are in many ways an inversion of the Lebensunwertes Leben principle: Life it seems, to their parents Magda and Joseph, was unworthy of them. There are some clear nods to the Second Viennese School (so loathed by Hitler) in the musical language of Luminal.  I felt it important to give the work an aesthetic historiography, as if the Webern Bagatelles, or Verklärte Nacht were playing on gramophone in the other room, while the sedated, wandering mind tries to break through to some point of conscious resistance. This is less of a programmatic instruction, merely a point of reference. 

Part Medea, part Kindertotenlieder, Luminal is loosely conceived as a lullaby requiem for Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig and Heidrun and naturally all the other children whose lives were mangled or extinguished by the broader parent – the State – not just then and there, but still and sadly, here.  Knowing the extraordinary humanitarian work Julian Burnside QC continues to do, let alone the fact that this composition exists purely because of his commission, the work is appropriately inscribed and dedicated to him with deep gratitude.


Jesse Plessis - A Boy And His Universe

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